During a Google internship PhD student Sam Slee discovered the openness of the Google culture and found a way to become part of it.

Name: Sam Slee Department: Google Analysis Products

Background: PhD candidate from Duke University working on Self-Reconfigurable Robotics.

How it happened: I first wanted to come to Google because I was inspired by stories of a great company culture and their famed "Don't be evil" motto. I wasn't disappointed. During the course of my internship much of my work was about writing connections from my team's codebase to several other large, existing Google systems. That meant I had to learn a lot about these core, internal workings that most companies would try to keep hidden.

But the Google culture is incredibly open. Even as an intern, I was able to read through documentation and source code for these important Google technologies. Whenever I came up with more detailed questions, there were plenty of Googlers that I could go to in person or by email who were very eager to provide help.

That eagerness rubs off, and after a while I looked to start sharing all of the documentation and tutorials that I had written while learning about those Google technologies. I eventually found an intern in another office -- in another city, actually -- who needed to start working with a particularly big, internal system that I had written an online tutorial for. It took me 2 days to get that system set up when I first tried it. Following my tutorial, it took him about 2 hours. He was thrilled to say the least, and at that point I felt like I had contributed as a real part of the Google culture.To learn more about how you can become a Google intern, please visit www.google.com/jobs/students/intern. We are now accepting applications for Summer 2009.

Remember that age when you were convinced that Santa wasn't real? No one can travel around the whole world in a single night, you thought. Well, think again, grinch of Christmas past! We have semi-certain proof that Santa does exist -- and that he completes his magical journey delivering toys to good little girls and boys, just as the story goes.

How else could we track him?

Google has teamed up with NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command to bring you the NORAD Santa Tracker. NORAD provides aerospace warning and control for North America 365 days a year. On Christmas Eve, they turn their attention to St. Nick, tracking his yearly gift-delivering journey around the world.

To be sure you don't miss Santa on his way toward your area, add the Norad Tracks Santa gadget to your iGoogle page. Then, on Christmas eve, come back to the NORAD Tracks Santa website to watch as NORAD uses Google Maps and Google Earth to plot Santa's location based on the data they receive from their satellites, radar, and observation aircraft. Videos of some of Santa's more notable stops are fed from NORAD's SantaCam network to YouTube, then uploaded to the NORAD Santa tracking map.

To get you in the spirit, check out highlights from Santa's journey last year:

If you're like me, your official sticker collecting days ended with the 4th grade, but once in a while stickers can still elicit that same sweet nostalgic satisfaction. Recently, we created a bunch of Gmail stickers: there's a glittery Gmail m-velope, a bookplate-style sticker in three different designs (robot, computer, or...unicorn), and a sheet of keyboard shortcut stickers that will help you learn to manage your email without touching your mouse.

And they're yours -- as long as you request them the old fashioned way: snail mail. Send a a self-addressed stamped envelope (one per person) to:

You may have seen our post a few weeks ago about last year's global winning team for the Google Online Marketing Challenge. The five students from the University of Western Australia partnered with a local climbing gym to create a rock-solid online marketing campaign. Next year's blog post could be about you!

Registration has begun for the 2009 Google Online Marketing Challenge, and we need YOU to help us get the word out. Last year over 8,000 students participated in the Challenge, which brought AdWords into 350 classrooms in nearly 50 countries across the globe.

The Challenge is a global competition where teams of 3-6 students receive US$200 of online advertising with AdWords and then source local businesses to work with to devise a campaign. Teams outline a strategy, run their campaign, assess the results and provide the business with recommendations to further develop their online marketing. The winners are judged by an international panel of independent academics.

The challenge is a great way to get you and your classmates involved in the quickly evolving world of online marketing. It's a skill you'll want to have as you graduate and prepare to enter a tough job market. And most importantly, it's fun! Our feedback from students who participated in last year's challenge was overwhelmingly positive.

If you think your professors, lecturers or tutors might be interested in signing their classes up for the Challenge, let them know about this opportunity! The Challenge is open to any university, any discipline, at the graduate or undergraduate level. Individual teams can sign up as well as entire classes as long as a professor agrees to oversee the project. And if you'd like some help approaching your professor, here's an email template with everything they'll need to know to decide if the Challenge is right for them.

Hurry because registration for the Challenge ends January 23rd, and the competition runs between January 26th and May 22nd 2009.

Ever wanted to know more about working in the "real world" besides what your parents and friends have told you? Do you have to be a gifted golfer to succeed in the corporate world? Will you have to become a business casual dresser? Most importantly, will you be challenged in a collegial, collaborative environment? Here is your opportunity to learn from Googlers across the company and around the globe who aren't that much older than you and are excited to share their stories about working at Google. Read about their experiences growing sales teams that generated hundreds of millions of dollars, performing stand-up in front of a thousand coworkers, and developing technical systems with JavaScript and Python. Here is the first of our 20,000+ part series about our Google employees, our Googlers.

Education: UC Davis, International Relations and Spanish Background: 4.5 years at Google

My story:Since first going abroad to study in college, I've had a passion for travel and exposure to other cultures. This interest ultimately led me to study International Relations and Spanish. So when I started working at Google, I was excited to seek out international professional experience. Soon, I started as the OSO Ambassador to Dublin in Q1 of 2006. I helped launch our European Inside Sales Team, and I knew I wanted to help give other Googlers the opportunity to have a similar experience through the Ambassador Program.

Since then, I've worked as global co-chair of the Ambassador Program, which has helped send over 100 Googlers to offices world wide over the past 2+ years. The program is now established in Mountain View, Ann Arbor and Boston in the US as well as Sao Paolo, Buenos Aires, Dublin, Wroclaw, Hyderabad, Gurgaon, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Sydney. As OSO grows, the Ambassador Program gives us an opportunity to erase the distances between offices by connecting Googlers in-person around the world, and letting them find innovative ways to address a variety of challenges.

While my involvement as a coordinator of the Ambassador Program has never been my core job, it's always been a very important part of my life at Google and a project I look forward to staying involved as long as I'm here.

YouTube is offering musicians around the globe the opportunity to join a symphony orchestra via video through the world's first collaborative online orchestra. This is a chance to perform alongside world-renowned conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, learn from composer Tan Dun and many members of the London Symphony Orchestra, and consult with pianist Lang Lang. All video entries will be combined into the first-ever collaborative virtual performance, and people around the world will select their favorites to perform at New York's Carnegie Hall in April 2009. Here's how to get started:

From today until January 28, 2009, musicians from around the world can submit videos showcasing their personal style as they perform two pieces: "The Internet Symphony", an original Tan Dun composition written specifically for this program, and a second classical piece of their choosing to demonstrate their musical ability. Hear composer Tan Dun talks about his inspiration for his piece:

So, no matter what instrument you play, from bassoon to trombone, timpani to piccolo, head here -- to download the appropriate sheet music and tune into a video tutorial, London Symphony Orchestra masterclasses, and instrument-by-instrument playthrough with the conductor. Once you feel ready to share your performance, upload and submit for your opportunity to join the ranks of the first-ever YouTube Symphony Orchestra!

New developments in information technology are rapidly revolutionizing the fields of archaeology, history, and the social sciences. The Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land (DAAHL) is one example of this that you can see for yourself at http://daahl.ucsd.edu*. This is the first 'node' in a network of online archaeological atlases that are part of the MedArchNet (Mediterranean Archaeology Network project), which is an international effort to create a 'portal science' for archaeology around the Mediterranean Sea.

The DAAHL brings together experts in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and the archaeology of the Holy Land (Israel, Palestine, Jordan, southern Lebanon, Syria and the Sinai Peninsula) to create the first online digital atlas of the region. Using the power of Google Maps and the Google Earth API, the tens of thousands of recorded archaeological sites for the region - from the remote prehistoric periods to the early 20th century - will be entered into a comprehensive database along with site maps, photographs and artifacts. The good news for you is that you can also use this digital atlas as a research tool.

Archaeologists study the past by looking at similarities and differences in human material culture across space, time, and form. The DAAHL project uses a variety of Google Maps and Google Earth API interfaces to help. Archaeological sites can be mapped by time period, by the ancient empire with which they were associated, and against a background of historic maps drawn in the 1870s and 1880s. Another exciting new development in the Digital Atlas is the Virtual Museum, which displays three dimensional objects in a Google Earth API, suspended over their find spot at the site they originated. The application lets you roll the object in all three dimensions, which is as close to holding the object as it can be.

*The historical and archaeological data for this project has been developed by a team of over 30 international scholars working in the region. This DAAHL website has been developed at the Geo-Archaeological information Systems Lab at Arizona State University, and is served from the California Institute for Telecommunications and Technology (Calit2), UC San Diego.

Posted by Thomas E. Levy, University of California, San Diego, Stephen H. Savage, Arizona State University, and Chaitan Baru, Supercomputer Center, University of California, San Diego

The end of the year is finally in sight. For you, that probably also means tons of work as you get through exams, rush to finish that term paper (which you should have started a month ago) and juggle your agenda to see family and friends. There's little we can do to alleviate your workload, but we thought that we could share some tips to help you make the best of your holidays and year-end celebrations.

In that spirit, we wanted to share one new Google tip per day as we count down to 2009. We'll cover everything from how to use Google Docs Holiday Templates to checking your flight status with Google Search. There will be much more to come throughout December, so check Google's Countdown to 2009 daily and add the countdown gadget to your iGoogle page.

We wish you good luck with all your year-end school activities and a great head start to the holiday season!

As part of Google's ongoing commitment to encouraging women to excel in computing and technology, we are pleased to host the 2009 Google Workshop for Women Engineers to recognize and reward deserving female graduate students in computer science, and inspire them to become active participants and leaders in creating technology. For more information on the program and to find out how to apply, please visit http://www.google.com/jobs/students/gwwe. The deadline to apply is Friday, December 5, 2008.

Up to 75 female computer scientists will be selected to attend a 3 day all-expenses paid workshop at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California January 22-25, 2009. This special workshop will include technical talks and career workshops, and a unique occasion to build and strengthen networks of women in technology. Students will also enjoy tours of the Googleplex, have the opportunity to meet with Google engineers in their research fields, and have fun exploring the San Francisco bay area.

On Friday, November 14, we hosted the Grand Finals of Google Code Jam. The event brought together the top 100 coder participants from around the world, who'd been taking their programming skills to the limit over the last few months, solving fiendish algorithmic puzzles and coming up with creative solutions to the tricky problems we posed.

When we announced Code Jam in June, we saw sign-ups from 22,867 students from 142 countries. After the online rounds, we hosted the top 500 coders at regional semifinals in 14 offices across Europe, Asia, and the Americas, and last Friday we were pleased to welcome the top 100 finalists to our Mountain View campus for the final, highlighting the overwhelming involvement of students in making this contest so successful.

We're pleased to share the final results of this year's Code Jam: Tiancheng Lou, from Tsinghua University in Beijing, took home the $10,000 Grand Prize, Zeyuan Zhu, also from Tsignhua University in Beijing, won second place, Bruce Merry from the United Kingdom came in third, and cash prizes went to the other finalists.

Since launching, Google Earth has brought countless faraway places to life for millions of users, from the pyramids of Egypt to the ruins of Machu Picchu. Never before, however, have we been able to view and tour an ancient city in unbelievable detail. All that has changed with the recent launch of the Ancient Rome 3D Layer, a collaboration between Google, Past Perfect Productions, and the Rome Reborn Project that allows you to tour a collection of more than 6700 3D buildings created by students and scholars of history, archaeology and architecture. Read what the mayor of Rome said about the launch on the Official Google Blog.

To view the 3D layer in Google Earth, select the layer by clicking on “Ancient Rome 3D” which is located within the “Gallery”. Using the Google Earth controls, you can swoop down from the satellite view to explore the ancient city from street to street and column to column. It's the closest we'll get to StreetView imagery from 320 AD!

Check out our video tour:

For tech-minded educators out there, we've also launched our first curriculum contest geared around a new layer in Google Earth. At earth.google.com/romecontest, K-12 teachers in the US can submit lesson plans that incorporate the new Ancient Rome in 3D layer for the chance to win fame, glory, and an awesome prize package. We're accepting submissions in any format from every subject area--from math to art history to philosophy--the only limit is your imagination!

Today, we launched a new feature in Gmail that will make keeping in touch with your friends and family a lot easier: voice and video chat. Now, from your Gmail inbox, you can not only IM with your contacts, but also have face-to-face conversations. No matter how near or distant your family might be, chats within Gmail are always free. To get started, all you need to do is install a small plugin and have a webcam handy for video chatting.

In 2003, a group of Googlers decided to establish the Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship to honor the work of their friend and colleague, Dr. Anita Borg, a computer scientist who dedicated her professional career to increasing the participation of women and other under-represented groups in the field of technology. In her memory, we're pleased to announce the 2009 Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship program in both the United States and Canada.

We're looking for women who will carry on the legacy of Dr. Borg, with strong academic backgrounds and demonstrated leadership qualities. A group of female undergraduate and graduate students will be chosen from the applicant pool, and scholarships will be awarded based on the strength of each candidate's academic background and demonstrated leadership. All US and Canadian scholarship recipients and finalists will be invited to visit the Googleplex in Mountain View, California next June for the Annual Google Scholars' Retreat. This special networking event includes workshops with a series of speakers, panelists, breakout sessions and social activities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

You may know that earlier this year, Google launched the Google Online Marketing Challengeto encourage students around the world to get hands-on experience with AdWords and online marketing, with the chance to win a trip to Mountain View in the process. From Nigeria to Australia to Taiwan, 1600 student teams from 47 countries around the world took part in the first ever global online marketing competition. The standard of teams was very high and we're proud to announce our winners and finalists for 2008!

The College for Modern Business Studies (Hungary) - Péter Seres, Tamás Szabó, László Tóth and Anikó Vetési. Taught by Nebojsa Damjanovich.

Below is a guest blog entry by the Global Winners from the University of Western Australia who recently visited the Googleplex in Mountain View as part of their prize. For us at Google, it was immensely gratifying to meet these students and hear them speak of the enthusiasm and benefit they received from competing.

Remember - The Google Online Marketing Challenge is on again in 2009. To find out more visit the 2009 Challenge website at www.google.com/onlinechallenge.

____

The Google Online Marketing Challenge has had a major impact on us as students by not only expanding our knowledge of online search advertising but also by increasing our career prospects. As student marketers it was great to actually get hands-on experience in using an online advertising platform. We got to work with real money and a real business client in a real world situation. The challenge was definitely a refreshing change from the usual theoretical university assessments we've been given in the past.

The challenge gave us the opportunity to put into practice some of the marketing theories we've been learning about in our Advertising and Promotion unit. In addition the resource guides provided by Google and the Adwords help center taught us how to easily and effectively advertise on Google's search and its content network. The knowledge and skills that we picked up will definitely help us in the future, especially at a time when more and more people are using the Internet.

And you don't even have to be studying marketing to benefit from taking this challenge. One day you may be starting your own business, and the skills you picked up through this challenge can be used to help promote your business on one of the world's largest online advertising networks. Also you could easily promote your charity, club or organization using the experience you gained from taking this challenge.

Besides the valuable experience we have all picked up, the challenge has helped increased our career prospects, especially with Google. One of our team members is actually in talks with Google for a job in London. Another one of our team members is currently in part-time employment with a Search Engine Marketing firm as a consequence of the challenge. Taking part in the challenge is definitely a great thing to add to your resume.

As global winners our prize was a trip to the Google headquarters in Mountain View. While we were there we received a tour of the Googleplex, found out what it was like to work there, met the Googlers who worked on the challenge and got plenty of Google's renowned free food and drinks! In addition we each received an awesome Macbook Pro. There are many cool prizes to win, so sign up for 2009 and who knows you and your team may be flying to the Google headquarters in 2009.

Before we sign off we would like to share a tip for everyone taking part in the 2009 challenge. It is highly recommended that you follow the guidelines, read it thoroughly and try to satisfy as much of the requirements as possible. The guides will help you structure your campaign correctly and give you a good understanding of what the judges expect from you. Apart from the resource guides, make sure to use the Adwords help center and other Adwords online resources. Just Google it!

It’s been a busy week at Google between Halloween last Friday (or Googleween as we like to call it) and the election on Tuesday. Halloween 2008 was celebrated in true Google style with lots of creative costumes and pumpkin carving. From current events to technology, Googlers costumes ranged from the simple to the elaborate. And of course our dogs got in on the fun too!

Our favorite student submitted costume comes from Ashley Tjader and Ashley Reid from theUniversity of South Carolina who dressed up as their favourite childhood lunch items.

Thanks, Ashley and Ashley, for sharing your Halloween fun with us!

The biggest news this week, of course, is the culmination of the 2008 US Presidential election. According to Rock the Vote, American youth turned out in record numbers to cast their votes. A whopping 55% of voters ages 18-29 voted in the 2008 election, up from 49% in 2004. No matter how you voted, we hope you were one of the 133 million people to get their voices heard during this historic election. To see how Google got involved and helped to get out the vote, visit our 2008 Election site or check out our blog post from just a few days ago. And congratulations to President Elect Barack Obama and Vice President Elect Joe Biden on their victory!

Last week marked the second birthday of Google Apps for Education, which we first announced in 2006 at EDUCAUSE -- an annual conference that focuses on an area we're very passionate about: technology in education. So we couldn't think of any better way to celebrate our 2 year and 2.5M user mark than by returning to Orlando, Florida for EDUCAUSE 2008. We even brought the bus to our event at Universal City Walk to mingle with some Marvel super heroes:

While in Florida, we got the chance to meet with many people from schools using Google Apps and hear more about their experience on campus. Obviously we really like to do this, as you might recall from our recent "App to School" bus tour, where we drove our eco-friendly bus to colleges across the country. Hearing directly from students, staff, and faculty about how they use products like Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sites, and Google Talk opens our eyes to all the opportunities for innovation that are still ahead. Here's a snapshot of what we heard:

Sadly, the bus tour ends here, but stay tuned because you never know where and when it might show up! If you're interested in bringing Google Apps to your school to make it a more effective learning community, visit www.google.com/a/edu

Today, American students across the country will vote (or finish voting), and we want to make it easy for you to find as much information as you'd like concerning this historic 2008 election. Here are three steps for getting the full scoop:

2) VoteFind out where to vote on our U.S. Voter Info site (on your mobile phone, head to m.google.com/elections). We hope your boss has given you at least an hour off to vote, and if you're so inclined, bring a video camera with you to the polls to capture your voting experience on YouTube's Video Your Vote channel. We're using Google Maps to track these videos across the country -- and to see where polling problems might be occurring during the day. In addition, we're featuring all political videos on the homepage -- including videos made especially for Election Day by both the McCain and Obama campaigns.

At Google, we'll take advantage of any opportunity to get creative -- and costumes are no exception. Halloween is the perfect chance to bring some fun into the workplace since dressing up doesn't end with our home page. Here are some of the fun costumes of Google Halloween past:

And now it's your turn! Send us photos of your best costume to studentspeak@google.com and we’ll post our favorites on the blog. Wishing you a spooky Halloween. Posted by Jessica Bagley, University Programs Team

As you may have seen in one of our previous posts, we recently launched a site called 2008 US Voter Info on Google Maps that shows users everything from their polling place to their custom registration information. It's been quite popular across the web, embedded in several websites and linked to from all types of news and blog sites. Additionally, there's one unique place where it has made an exceptional impact, and that's within a celebrity-infused PSA YouTube video titled "5 Friends."

The first video was launched in early October, around the time when registration deadlines were approaching. With the election only a few days away, the same cast has come back to record yet another video, encouraging citizens to get five more friends to vote. Celebrities featured in the video include: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Snoop Dogg, Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts, Ben Stiller, Will Smith, Steven Spielberg, Justin Timberlake, “Borat”, Zach Braff, Colin Farrell, Neil Patrick Harris, Scarlett Johansson, Shia LeBeouf, Tobey Maguire, Ryan Reynolds, and Jason Segal.

We're excited to have collaborated in this process and hope that more citizens will be able to get the information they need on election day, thanks to the virality of such tremendous get-out-the-vote efforts. So what are you waiting for? Tell five more friends to vote! There's not much time left.

This is a guest post from the folks at liveclimate.org, an organization we worked with to offset the Google Apps bus tour's carbon footprint. Developing countries will be the hardest hit by effects of climate change, and hundreds of projects around the world are using the growing carbon market to fight poverty in the poorest parts of the world while also reducing greenhouse gas emissions and preserving the integrity of our climate. We think these issues are important and would love for you to help.

My name is Jit Bhattacharya, and I'm one of the founders of Live Climate. We are proud to be the carbon offset partner for Google's "App to School" bus tour. The "App to School" bus tour offset their emissions by donating to a small business bringing solar energy to the communities in Nicaragua that need it most.

Climate change and poverty will be the two defining challenges of this millennium. To win at both these challenges requires commitment from government, from business, and from everyday people like you and me. Google has obviously made that commitment. With their RechargeIT program and solar initiative, we are that much closer to driving 100mpg cars and building affordable solar energy.

Now it's time for us all to make the commitment. If you were wondering what you could do, here are 5 simple things you can do to go carbon neutral and stop climate change:

Change the Lights – For how small it is, Compact Fluroescent light bulb makes a big difference. Each CFL installed saves you money and prevents 110 lbs of coal from being burned. If every college student in the U.S. changed just 2 light bulbs, we could prevent over 1 Million metric tons of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere. If you need any more convincing, Wal-Mart and Costco are offering huge discounts.

Green Your Ride – So maybe you can't afford a Toyota Prius yet. You can still reduce emissions from transportation. Walk or take public transportation whenever possible. If you do drive, fill up your tires to their limit. It makes a 5% difference! When driving play a game of seeing how many miles you can get out of each tank. With $4/gallon gas, it's a game worth playing.

Eat Less Beef –The food we eat is a major source of carbon emissions. Visit http://coolclimate.berkeley.edu/ to see the carbon footprint of your diet. Eating less beef, eating organic, and buying from local farmer's markets reduces how much energy has gone into the production and transportation of your food.

Make Your Home Super-Efficient - Seal up doors and windows. Switch to EnergyStar appliances. And when you've done all of that, contact your utility to make sure that the few kilowatt-hours of electricity that you do use is coming from renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

Offset Your Footprint with Live Climate – Through the simple changes above, we can reduce our individual carbon footprints by over 50%. To go fully carbon neutral, offset your footprint through a site like Live Climate. Offsetting lets you account for your own carbon footprint by contributing to a project elsewhere that is reducing emissions. With sites like Live Climate, you can pick exactly what project to contribute to and you are guaranteed that is helping to fight poverty as well.

The biggest thing you can do this year for climate change is Get out and Vote! This year's election is going to determine how we decide to address climate change in the coming decade, and students like you should be part of the solution.

Many of you students will soon have your first voting experience. And in this year's election, every vote counts. Here at Google, we've discovered data that proves how people like you have increasingly been searching for voting information, like how to register and where to vote.

It's hard to believe that in 2008, information so important to U.S. citizens and the democratic process isn't well organized on the web. To solve this problem, we've released our US Voter Info site, an effort to simplify and centralize registration information and voting locations.

Are you registered to vote? What's the best way to obtain an absentee ballot? When people visit the site, answers to these questions appear. And anyone with a website can provide the same information. The US Voter Info gadget places a simple search box that expands to show a full set of voter information when someone enters an address.

We are also offering a simpler way to find out where to vote. By entering a home address, citizens across the country will be able to find their polling place for election day.

To further encourage voter participation, we've opened up this data to third-party sites and developers through an API developed by Dan Berlin, one of our open-source engineers. We're excited to share this information, and hope that others will find it useful in encouraging citizens to vote.

Organizing information is our mission. We do that every day with web content, and we want to do the same thing with information to inform and empower voters and to help them get to the polls this election season.

In February, we launched the East Africa Gadget Competition that saw students from 10 universities in 6 East African countries compete in creating and developing the "next big thing". Following several other such competitions around the world, the East Africa contest was the first of its kind for those of us on the African continent. It gave East African students in computer science and IT the opportunity to demonstrate their skills, creativity to develop gadgets with content, feeds, features, looks and languages that reflect the needs of online users of today and tomorrow. Those students who combine outstanding creativity and exceptional technical skills could win great prizes.

Throughout the six months of the competition, all participating students received support via a dedicated email contact as well as monthly emails taking them step by step through how to create a gadget. Regardless of the technical difficulties we experienced, students kept working hard and submitted 41 fully functioning gadgets. Everyone who submitted a gadget has put a lot of time, effort, creativity and care into developing outstanding web applications. We're certain that the high quality of the gadgets and their relevance for local as well as international users will attract a high number of users not only in Africa but around the world.

Our East Africa Gadget Team was impressed by the quality and level of creativity of the submissions, which did not make it easy for our panel to select the winners. Still, only six entries could win one of the great prizes, and the judges have chosen these:

I recently had the chance to interview several long-time Googlers about the early days. To commemorate our 10th birthday, we've been revisiting our memories by digging into company lore. As fun as it has been to look back, of course we've also got our sights firmly set on what lies ahead.

A few months ago the Gmail team introduced Gmail Labs as a way to quickly launch experimental new features. Some of these might really help your productivity like Superstars, Quick Links, or the Forgotten Attachment Detector, while others -- like Old Snakey -- are just for fun. And then there's our newest addition called Mail Goggles...

While Gmail can't always prevent you from sending messages you might later regret, the new Labs feature I wrote called Mail Goggles may help.

When you enable Mail Goggles, it will check that you're really sure you want to send that late night Friday email. And what better way to check than by making you solve a few simple math problems after you click send to verify you're in the right state of mind?

By default, Mail Goggles is only active late night on the weekend as that is the time you're most likely to need it. Once enabled, you can adjust when it's active in the General settings.

To activate Mail Goggles (or any of the 24 Labs features currently available), just click the "Settings" link at the top of your Gmail inbox, then go to the "Labs" section.

We've just posted the first three videos in the Google Technology Roundtable Series. Each one is a discussion with senior Google researchers and technologists about one of our most significant achievements. We use a talk show format, where I lead a discussion on the technology.

While the videos are intended for a reasonably technical audience, I think they may be interesting to many as an overview of the key challenges and ideas underlying Google's systems. And of course they offer a glimpse into the people behind Google.

The next title is "Map Reduce," a discussion of this key technology (first, at Google, and now having a great impact across the field) for harnessing parallelism provided by very large-scale clusters computers, while mitigating the component failures that inevitably occur in such big systems. My discussion is with four of our Map Reduce expert engineers: Sanjay Ghemawat and Jeff Dean again, plus Software Engineers Jerry Zhao and Matt Austern who discuss the origin, evolution and future of Map Reduce. By the way, this type of infrastructure underlies the infrastructure concepts in our recent post on "The Intelligent Cloud."

The third video, "Applications of Human Language Technology," is a discussion of our enormous progress in large-scale automated translation of languages and speech recognition. Both of these technology domains are coming of age with capabilities that will truly impact what we expect of computers on a day-to-day basis. I discuss these technologies with human language technology experts Franz Josef Och, an expert in the automated translation of languages, and Mike Cohen, an expert in speech processing.

We hope to produce more of these, so please leave feedback at YouTube (in the comments field for each video), and we will incorporate your ideas into our future efforts.

The Google Earth Education team is excited to announce two new science outreach initiatives. Both are part of our effort to increase educational outreach and expand upon the successful workshop we held in Boulder at the University of Colorado in the spring.

Google Earth Conference

In partnership with the University of Michigan, we are co-hosting a conference focused on exploring science data visualization in Google Earth, Google Maps, and KML. The Scientific

Applications for Google Earth Conference is scheduled for October 22nd and 23rd in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The two-day event will bring together researchers and students from all over the country to discuss the scientific uses of virtual globes and how that technology is enabling newer and richer data interaction experiences for both expert and novice users.

Keynote speakers include Tim Killeen, Assistant Director for Geosciences at the National Science Foundation, and Dan Adkins, former Director of the National Science Foundation Office of Cyberinfrastructure.

Like the Boulder event, Google engineers will be on hand to work directly with students and scientists on ways to overcome technical problems and to provide training for those interested in advanced techniques with KML. Of course we'll be sure to wear maize and blue! Registration for the event is now open, details are available on the conference website. Spots are limited so be sure to check it out soon.

Google Earth Contest

The second initiative is a contest targeting scientific content in KML. The KML in Researchcontest is open to both students and professionals. We think this will be a fun way for people working with KML to get some exposure for their work and perhaps win some prizes!

So get out your best research ideas and bring your data to life with KML and Google Earth. In addition to prizes, winners will have their work showcased at the American Geophysical Union's annual Fall meeting on December 15th!

Political participation is at an all-time high this election season, and a record number of voters have already started to cast ballots -- a few even camped out in Ohio to be the first in line for early voting yesterday.

But roughly 1 in 4 Americans still aren't registered to vote, according to the most recent Census report. Now is the time -- voter registration deadlines are less than a week away in most states.

We're trying to help increase participation by making sure you have easy access to voting information. Google's Voter Info Map currently puts registration, absentee and early voting information in one place. (If you're on a phone, you can check out our mobile version at m.google.com/elections.)

We're working closely with state and local election officials, the Voting Information Project and the League of Women Voters to centralize official voting information. Stay tuned for more posts on the project and details on how you can help confirm your local polling place address.

Leonardo DiCaprio, will.i.am, Tobey Maguire, Forrest Whitaker and a few of their friends put together the first in a series of public service announcements to encourage young Americans to register to vote -- and they include a link to our Voter Info Map.

As the Internet plays a greater role in helping people participate in elections, we're excited to help out. And you can, too. Help make sure everyone is ready for election day by reminding your friends and family to register and vote.

Frontend web design and backend server programming are enough to make many people's heads spin. However, for Matt Pokrzywa, it was the essence of his highly technical work during his summer internship with Google and the Checkout team. Here is his story in our on-going series about our awesome interns, our Googlers Beta.

"On top of becoming a better programmer, working at Google has made me a better designer and problem solver."Matt Pokrzywa, Software Engineering Intern

My story:
My internship experience can be best described as "work hard, play hard." Spending this summer at Google has allowed me to work on some really tough challenges and work with some of the smartest people in the world. I was placed on a small team on Google Checkout and from the first day onward, I knew the work I was doing was real engineering work that otherwise would have been assigned to a full time engineer. I even joined my team for a week trip to Mountain View to do a technical deep dive with the Google Sites team. While having such responsibilities was difficult and often times stressful, working at Google offered so many ways to break the tension. Whether it was playing ping-pong or Guitar Hero with my coworkers, or getting out to explore Manhattan with my fellow interns, Google provided so many awesome ways to relax and just chill out.

Besides being so much fun, working at Google was a learning experience like no other. I can honestly say I learned more in my 14 weeks here than I did the entire previous school year. I was fortunate enough to be assigned projects that allowed me to explore so many areas of Google technology. I worked with frontend web design, backend server programming, and I actively took part in brainstorming and design sessions to define the future of our product. On top of becoming a better programmer, working at Google has made me a better designer and problem solver in general.

Having interned in other technology companies before, I have to say that the Google internship experience blew all the others away. The quality of the code and the documentation, the brilliance of everyone around you, and the incredibly fun and relaxed company culture is something you'll not experience anywhere else.

After starting the week at UNC Greensboro, the Google Apps Road Trip was off to its next stop at my alma mater and home of the Cavaliers, the University of Virginia. Needless to say, as an alum, I was both giddy and nostalgic as we headed north on 29 to the ole' stomping grounds. When we reached the UVa campus in the heart of Charlottesville, all of these great memories came rushing back - Saturday afternoon tailgating, delicious Bodo's bagels, and late nights at the Biltmore. I took a walk around campus to see TJ's "lawn" and grab dinner at the Corner.

I also visited the gorgeous, new building for the McIntire School of Commerce, where I spent 2 years studying finance and management. Recognized as one of the country's premier undergraduate business programs, the Comm School emphasizes a case-based and collaborative learning culture. To simulate a real-world professional environment, we primarily worked in small teams to evaluate the net present value of a product launch or develop a new marketing campaign.

Therefore, I was happy to talk with students about how Google Apps can make their lives and schoolwork a little easier. On Wednesday morning, we pulled the bus right into Newcomb Hall plaza between the book store and student center. UVa recently deployed Virginia mail, so we demoed the cool features of some other Google Apps technology. Students were excited to learn about the real-time collaborative functionality of Google Docs. They appreciated that group work can become less annoying, because they can work on the same paper simultaneously, rather than having to save and send back and forth multiple times. We also heard from graduate students and first-years how they create their own surveys to conduct opinion polls in a Politics class or ask friends about the next trip to Wintergreen.

Overall, it was just a phenomenal visit to Charlottesville. We got to chat with really energetic students, faculty, and administrators and had a lot of fun too - tossing frisbees around the plaza and rocking out to "Say It Ain't So" on the bus. Thanks to everyone at the University of Virginia for "getting on the bus!"